Saturday, August 25, 2007

Zachem - again and again

I've posted a lot of photos of the work (in various media) of the Zachem (or 3A4eM, or Зачем) crew - and found their website for the first time today (the caption on the front page says "consume work die") - here are a couple more such pics:

3x Zachem stencil on Petrovka, 6:08pm, March 26, 2005.

Large Zachem stencil on Varsonof'evsky Pereulok, 5:57pm, March 26, 2005.

NEW YORK -- Cave Tirado shakes a can of orange spray paint and begins to emblazon his name on his first American wall. He is not looking over his shoulder or worried that the police might catch him.

Tirado, 19, traveled to New York from Spain, partly to see the city, but mostly to leave his mark on the walls of an old Queens warehouse where graffiti is legal.

"I always write my name," he said in Spanish, while wearing a graffiti-style shirt that also bears his name. "To represent your name -- that's what graffiti is to me."

The warehouse, called 5 Pointz, has become a haven for artists in a city where graffiti has flourished for decades and where officials have waged a seemingly endless battle to keep it out.

The idea behind 5 Pointz was to give people a legal outlet to spray-paint as much graffiti as they like on the five-story building -- without ever having to worry about getting busted.

"The purpose of this building isn't to eliminate graffiti and to be a cure for the graffiti problem," says Jonathan Cohen, 34, who runs 5 Pointz. "It's a place where you can take what you do and push the boundaries to a point where you're doing something that there's no way you can do illegally because you have plenty of time."

Otto Munoz has made graffiti illegally, but he now comes to 5 Pointz to practice drawing and to soak in other styles of graffiti that have made their way here from around the world.

"It's not worth the risk to go out and get two throw-ups [pieces] and get arrested for five years, and that's five years you can't be painting," Munoz says.

There are different types of graffiti: "Bombers" quickly paint simple, two-toned messages, generally their names, onto walls; "writers" make more elaborate artwork.

The writers convene on most weekends at 5 Pointz and paint pieces with bright colors and sharp or curvy shapes on the walls. But as Cohen notes, the walls change every week.

The best view of 5 Pointz is from the subway, where the entire edifice emerges as a patchwork quilt of spray paint.

New York City law prohibits people between the ages of 18 and 21 from possessing "graffiti instruments" unless they are in locked containers. The law also made it mandatory for certain property owners to report graffiti postings on their properties to the city so that they can be cleaned up. Artists have taken the city to court over the law.

But, as Cohen notes, time spent at 5 Pointz is time spent off the street.

"The time that someone spends here . . . working on the building, painting on the building -- they aren't going out and destroying the city, which is a benefit toward the city," Cohen says. "But . . . if someone wants to do something illegally, they're going to do it illegally whether or not this place is here."

Tirado has done graffiti both legally and illegally in Spain, France and now the United States, and says he frequently runs from police.

"We're not killing anyone, nor are we robbing. We're not doing anything," he says. "We're just filing the world with color."

Chisinau - Telecentru underpass

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Dissenters' sticker

THEY ARE GROWING FAT ["During the time of Putin's rule, the army of bureaucrats has grown by 4,000,000 people"]WE ARE DYING OFF ["And the population of Russia has declined by 7,000,000 as a result of poverty and insufficient availability of medicines"]

DISSENTERS' MARCH - 14 April starting at 12.00 on Pushkin Square

At least I'm pretty sure that's what it says, but as you can see some of the words are blurry. I'm not sure if the first claim is correct, and the second one is obviously an exaggeration - Russians are dying off for lots of reasons - but it seems like an effective bit of marketing for the event.

Monday, April 16, 2007

SPB stenciller gerdaa...

...has a photopage with a few of her works. On it, she describes her location as "Saint-Putinberg, Russian Federation." I have photos of some of her stencils somewhere - very creative work (and yes, I know it's half-assed to just say I have them and not post them - maybe later). You can read more about her at her LJ.